The messenger seems to have continued with a picture of Phaethon’s fall. The body, still giving off the smoke of destruction, is next brought in, and we possess part of Clymene’s frantic speech. Her grief is mingled with terror: the strange manner of her son’s death may provoke her husband Merops to inquiry and reflexion and so her long-past union with the Sun-god may come to light. She bids them hide the body in the treasure-chamber, of which she alone holds the keys. Soon the king enters amid lyric strains celebrating the marriage-day of Phaethon. He is giving orders for merry-making when a servant hurries out to inform him that the treasure-chamber is giving forth clouds of smoke. Merops hastens within, and the chorus bewail the disclosure which is imminent. In a moment the stricken father is heard returning with lamentation. The course of the last scene is not certain, but probably a god reconciled the king and his wife, giving directions for the disposal of Phaethon’s body; a beautiful but obscure fragment,[802] redolent with the charm of breezes and murmuring boughs after all this blaze and splendour, seems to point to the story of Phaethon’s sisters, who mourned him beside the western waters and were transformed into poplars. This god was probably Oceanus,[803] the father of Clymene. He alone (deity of the world-encircling water) could give unity to these two pictures, the radiant eastern land of Phaethon’s youthful enterprise, and the distant western river where his sorrows and his end are bathed in dim beauty.
This sketch allows us to realize how much we have lost in the Phaethon. The romantic events and setting recall the Andromeda. Clymene’s sorrow and shame mingle strangely with the gallant enterprise and bright charm of the whole, somewhat as Creusa’s story is contrasted with the fresh cheerfulness of Ion. Above all, the noble simplicity and high-hearted adventurousness of Phaethon, inspired by his new-found kinship with a god and chafing at the placid programme of domestic honour and luxury which his supposed father sets before him—this is a concept of boundless promise.
The Hypsipyle,[804] which was produced late[805] in Euripides’ life, is specially interesting through the discovery in 1906 of extensive fragments at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Previously it was known by scanty quotations of no great interest, though apparently much prized in ancient times.[806] The plot is now in the main clear. Hypsipyle, grand-daughter of the god Dionysus and daughter of Thoas, King of Lemnos, was exiled because she refused to join in the massacre of the Lemnian men by their women. Previously she had borne twin sons to Jason. These she lost when expelled from her home. She is now slave to Eurydice, Queen of Nemea in the north of the Peloponnese, and nurse to her infant son Opheltes. Her own sons come in quest of her, and without recognizing their mother are entertained in the palace. Hypsipyle is quieting the child with a song and a rattle when the chorus of Nemean women enter. Next certain soldiers arrive from the host which the seven chieftains are leading against Thebes. Their commander, the prince Amphiaraus, explains that the army is in need of water, and Hypsipyle consents to show them a spring. Later she returns in anguish: during her absence the child has been killed by a great serpent. Eurydice is about to slay her, when she appeals to Amphiaraus, who pleads her cause and promises Eurydice that the Greeks shall found a festival in honour of the child. (This festival is that of the famous Nemean Games.) He sees that this fatal accident is a bad omen for the enterprise of the Seven, and names the child Archemorus[807] instead of Opheltes. Eurydice is appeased. Later we find Hypsipyle and her sons made known to one another, and the god Dionysus appears, apparently to arrange future events.
Though there is one difficulty as to the plot, namely, that we do not know what function was assigned to Hypsipyle’s sons—they cannot have been introduced merely for the recognition-scene—the whole conception strikes one as simple and masterly. It has been well remarked[808] that while a modern dramatist would have omitted the Theban expedition, “nothing seemed to the Greeks worthy of contemplation in the theatre by a great people, unless it had some connexion with the exploits and the history of nations.... On the same canvas the death of one little child and the doom of the seven chieftains with their crowding battalions are depicted in a perspective which sets the former fatality in the foreground.”
The captive princess, even through the ruins of the text, shines forth with great charm. Her whole life centres round her lost children and the brief magical time of her union with Jason. The chorus reproach her with her indifference to the exciting presence of Adrastus’ great army—she will think of nothing save Argo and the Fleece. When at point to die her spirit flashes back to those old days in a few words of amazing poignancy:—
ὦ πρῷρα καὶ λευκαῖνον ἐξ ἅλμης ὕδωρ
Ἀργοῦς, ἰὼ παῖδ’....
“Ah, prow of Argo and the brine that flashed into whiteness! ah, my two sons!” Her talk with them towards the end is a pathetic and lovely passage equal to anything Euripides ever wrote in this kind.